Monday, 4 January 2016

Women Techmakers Ahmedabad - Event by GDG Ahmedabad

Google Developer Groups (GDGs) are for developers who are interested in Google's developer technology; everything from the Android, Chrome, Drive, and Google Cloud platforms, to product APIs like the Cast API, Maps API, and YouTube API. As a local chapter of GDG (GDG - Ahmedabad), we plan regular meetup/events to discuss, share experience, share and get knowledge amongst the group.

Women Techmakers is Google’s brand and global program for women in technology. Women Techmakers provides visibility, community, and resources for women in technology to drive innovation and participation in the field. Women Techmakers events are designed to promote an environment of inclusivity for women in technology, as well as celebrate women leading the industry. We want to advance, grow, and celebrate women developers, designers, and technology entrepreneurs.

In order to celebrate the month of International Women’s Day (March 8), we had a very successful event “Women Techmakers Ahmedabad” on 27th March, 2015 at Ahmedabad University campus. Currently, team GDG Ahmedabad includes Paresh Mayani, Dhrumil Shah, Ketan Raval, Vaibhavi Desai, Utpal Betai, Pratik Patel, Chintan Rathod and Dhruva Shastri.

Following are some statistics regarding the event.

Participants:

- Total 75 participants

- 50% developers + 50% students

- Gender ratio was 70% (female) - 30% (male)

Technologies/topics covered:

Opportunities with Google

Google Anita Borg Scholarship

App demo of an app made up using Beacons

Tech startups - Success Stories

Social startups - explaining how website and mobile world is helping them reach out to a larger audience

Introduction to Git and GitHub

Latest trends in android

The event started with a talk on “Opportunities with Google” by the Women Techmaker Lead of GDG Ahmedabad, Vaibhavi Desai. She explained different initiatives of Google for students and professionals. It included Google Student Ambassador Program, Google Developer Group, Google Business Group, Google Anita Borg Memorial Asia Pacific Scholarship, Google summer of code, Google internship/jobs etc.

This was followed by a tech entrepreneurial talk by Nidhi Suthar, founder of a tech startup - “Persona”. She inspired the audience a lot ! Then we had a session on “Latest trends in Android” by Dhrupal Patel, who works as a Software engineer at InfoStretch Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

After two light sessions, we again had Vaibhavi Desai on board as a speaker, explaining the use of Git and GitHub in detail. She explained the whole technology from scratch, which the participants found very much useful in the era of collaborative working and open source contribution.

We also had some product demos of the women-led-startups, where they talked about their lives, their experiences, how they are using technology to take their startup to an altogether new level.

It included the talks of Monica Yadav (Respire Experiential Learning Group - Breathe the change), Kruthika Katrat (OoWomaniya - Women's Health and Wellness Companion) and Kanan Dhruv (Lawtoon - Where Children can learn the laws Comics way). One demo was on a budding startup - wWhere - World's First Location Sharing Service, which was presented by the team members Kajal Patel and Kinjal Patel.

Last but not the least, the lighting talk by Aditi Gupta (Founder, Menstrupedia - Your guide to healthy periods) on “Using technology effectively for a social change” made a deep impact on people’s minds. Aditi is working towards spreading awareness about menstruation. Aditi made it to the achiever’s list of Forbes India 30 under 30, 2014 for her work towards breaking the taboo around menstruation. Menstrupedis’s website has 2 lakhs visitors per month and a community of 100+ writers on Menstrupedia Blog. Aditi is also is a TEDx Speaker and a Global Shaper at the World Economic Forum. She dreams of a future where menstruation is not a taboo but a welcoming change in a girl’s life.

The biggest achievement of the event was, that we had a wonderful combination of leading women speakers - starting from budding and well recognized startups ( both tech and social ), bright students, experienced developers working in reputed companies of the city.

As this was a woman centric event, we got an extraordinary response from the female participants saying that they want more and more events like this. The invited women speakers proved to be a great source of motivation for all the participants over there.